Kelly Asbury Quotes
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The way I choose voice talent is I don't let them tell me who the actor is.
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I actually applied at Hanna-Barbera to work on 'The Smurfs' when I got laid off for a brief period of time from Disney. I didn't get the job. That was my first introduction to Smurfs.
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I wanted to create a world that presented the Smurfs with obstacles and challenges and really put them in a fish-out-of-water situation but also make them very active in getting out of their situation. Make them really the central characters.
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If you look at it, 'The Lion King' is very similar to 'Hamlet.'
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Films like 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Shrek' are hits because they hit on different levels with different age groups. Striking that balance is what I strive for. But I won't know if I've done it until the audience sees it.
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A lot of people say to me, 'Is this good, to do to a Shakespeare piece?' And I think, 'You know, 'West Side Story' did it very cleverly, in a different way.' But if you look at 'Bonnie and Clyde,' 'Titanic,' 'Avatar,' 'Grease,' 'Brokeback Mountain'... they're all 'Romeo and Juliet' stories.
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My favorite films left the camera rest, and the actors and characters have a stage to act. Move the camera when it's motivating.
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I think 'West Side Story' is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, musicals ever put onscreen - or stage, for that matter. I, frankly, like Zeffirelli's 'Romeo and Juliet' very much, too. I grew up with that... I loved it. I loved the score; I loved the acting.
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I don't want to be the one accused of ruining the Smurfs.
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In animation, there's not a medium I believe that's more collaborative. It is a team of people, of different disciplines, coming together. The decisions are made by consensus in many cases. My job as a director is to exercise the best judgement I can in terms of which decision is the best one to make for the movie.
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On 'Shrek,' Eddie Murphy was locked in as the donkey before we'd even designed the donkey.
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The Smurfs - and they're this way in Peyo's comics as well - do have a rubbery indestructibility about them. They can get bruised & battered. But they then just sort of bounce back very quickly, like those classic cartoon characters Wiley Coyote and Tom & Jerry.
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Star-crossed lovers who have a destiny that isn't necessarily going to work in their favor - that's a universal story; that's an archetypal story.
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We are all rebellious teenagers. Sometimes we grow out of it, and sometimes we don't.
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Smurfs must only eat Smurfberries. They can eat Smurfberry pie, they can have a Smurfberry sandwich, they can do whatever they want. But you can't have a Subway sandwich. It's got to be Smurfberries.
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I've seen animation features just languish until the right combination of things come along to keep it alive.
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It happens a lot that a name actor will be signed on to a project in its germ stage.
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I think what's universal about the story of 'Romeo and Juliet' is every one has grown up and done something that was rebellious against their parents' wishes, be it love or something else.
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I don't approach my movies with a target audience in mind. I try to make something that's true to the subject matter as much as possible, while still being entertaining and fun.
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Animation tends to have several different writers who serve different functions. I think, on a lot of animated features, there are a lot of writers who don't get credited. It's the policy at Disney, for instance, in deciding who gets credit. It depends on the writer's contract, so many things.
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What, if not Shakespeare, is open for interpretation?
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There's a lot of movies, and I've made some of them that could be categorized this way, but there's definitely been a trend in animated features of all types to be a little bit cynical, if you will, to have a little bit of 'knowing' humor to them, kind of a wink to the audience.
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I want the audience to walk out of the theater feeling they got their money's worth. Every movie that I enjoy, I leave the theater with something to take with me.
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I'm in the entertainment business, and I make commercially entertaining animated features.